Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient WorldA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. How do you know the nature of another person: who she is, or what she is capable of? In four exploratory essays, a seasoned historian examines the mechanisms by which ancient people came to have knowledge—not of the world and its myriad processes but about something more intimate, namely the individuals they encountered in close quarters, those they knew in everyday life. Tracing previously unfathomed structures beneath the surface of late ancient Christianity, Ellen Muehlberger reveals surprising insights about the ancient world and, by extension, the modern. Things Unseen holds treasures for scholars of early Christian studies, for historians in general, and for all those who wonder about how we know what we seem to know. |
Contents
Impossible Women | 14 |
Foundations of Knowledge | 53 |
The Advent of the Superfather | 87 |
Faces in the Crowds | 120 |
Acknowledgments | 159 |
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Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World Ellen Muehlberger No preview available - 2025 |
Common terms and phrases
Acts of Constantinople Ancient Faces ancient world Anonymous Sequel Augustine Augustine of Hippo baptism Berger Bierbrier bishop century Chalcedon Chris Church History classroom context Council of Constantinople created culture Cyril of Alexandria David Brakke dead demon Doxiadis Early Christian Studies Egyptian essay Eusebius evidence exercise faith fathers Fayum Portrait Painters Fayyum portraits forgery funerary genre Gesios Greek Gregory of Nazianzus human imagined intent Jesus John of Ephesus kind knowledge late ancient Christian Late Antiquity Letter Libanius literary lived Mary of Egypt Mummy Portraits Mysterious Fayum Portraits Nestorius orthodoxy Oxford University Press paintings past Patristic Perpetua and Felicity person photography pornē practice Progymnasmata prostitute Pseudepigraphy rhetorical Roman Egypt Rufinus scholars Second Council sense Severus Progymnasmata Shenoute sōphrosynē speak speech in character story superfather Susan Wessel texts things tian tion tradition trans translated viewers Walker woman women words writing Zosimus καὶ τὴν